Leonard Bernstein - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Broadway Musical 1976 (part 2)

Leonard Bernstein - 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Broadway Musical 1976 (part 1)
The first part of the Broadway fiasco of Leonard Bernstein, hope you like it the audio quality is not great, it was a theater recording.

When the musical opened for tryouts in Philadelphia on February 26, 1976, it disappointed and angered audiences and received nearly unanimously negative reviews. Before its next round of tryouts at the National Theatre in Washington, DC, Lerner and Bernstein worked desperately to salvage the show, but despite all their tireless revisions and the eff orts of a new director and choreographer, by the time 1600 made it to Broadway, it was unanimously dismissed as a “tremendous flop.” The company gave only seven official performances at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on Broadway, May 4–8, 1976, before the show closed, losing its entire investment. Bernstein and Lerner, who expressed great disappointment in their failure, withdrew the work from their catalogs, and it was not performed again until after both of them had died.

Critics in 1976 agreed that 1600 failed largely because of its incoherent narrative and bitter tone. Many praised Bernstein's score, but they found the show as a whole confusing and heavy-handed, pointing to Lerner's book as the main problem. It lacked logical dramatic flow and sagged under the weight of trying to comment on too many social issues without inspiring enough emotional involvement with the characters. Rather than providing an uplifting musical history of the American presidency, it preached relentlessly on racial inequality and political hypocrisy.
By
Elissa Harbert

0:00 01. Entr Acte
1:43 02. Invitation
04:40 03. Bright And Black
07:14 04. Impeachment Proceedings
13:19 05. Vote
15:01 06. Duet For One
23:55 07. Standing Ovation
25:07 08. Lemonade Lucy
26:35 09. Keep Your Head Up, Mr. Lincoln
31:22 11. The Robber Baron Minstrel Parade
33:20 12. Pity The Poor
33:55 13. Cleaning House
35:44 14. The Mark Of A Man
37:53 15. The Boss Returns
39:04 16. The Red White And Blues
42:03 17. Not Even Placed In Nomination
42:36 18. McKinley's Funeral
46:28 19. Teddy Roosevelt
46:56 20. Bows
47:54 21. Rehearse
50:57 22. Exit Music